War and Peace
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Excerpts from War and Peace, Book 11 (Ch. II - IV), Book 13 (Ch. II)
By Leo N. Tolstoy (1828-1910)
, 1869
Reframing can break an impasse - changing the terms of the debate to refocus on priorities can lead to surprising and original solutions
Leadership requires restraint - willingness to recognize and adapt to inevitable circumstances, even when pressured to resist, is the hallmark of a leader
There is an equilibrium between attack and defense - even a successful action, pursued too far, can make the attacker vulnerable to reversal
Keywords:
military, history, fiction, general, commander in chief, war, supply lines, lines of communication, meetings, culmination point, turning point, inflection point, contingency, complexity, necessity, inevitability, impossibility, chance, genius, France, Europe, Russia, Moscow, Napoleon, 19th century, 1800s, 1812, retreat, momentum, will, planning, decision, restraint, attack, defense, reframe, dynamics
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Book 11, Chapter II: The French advance and Russian retreat
The forces of a dozen European nations burst into Russia. The Russian army and people avoided a collision till Smolensk was reached, and again from Smolensk to Borodino. The French army pushed on to Moscow, its goal, its impetus ever increasing as it neared its aim, just as the velocity of a falling body increases as it approaches the earth. Behind it were seven hundred miles of hunger-stricken, hostile country ahead were a few dozen miles separating it from its goal. Every soldier in Napoleon's army felt this and the invasion moved on by its own momentum. The more the Russian army retreated the more fiercely a spirit of hatred of the enemy flared up, and while it retreated the army increased and consolidated. The Russians retreated eighty miles - to beyond Moscow - and the French reached Moscow and there came to a standstill.
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The Commander-in-Chief
For people accustomed to think that plans of campaign and battles are made by generals - as any one of us sitting over a map in his study may imagine how he would have arranged things in this or that battle - the questions present themselves: Why did Kutuzov during the retreat not do this or that? Why did he not take up a position before reaching Fili? Why did he not retire at once by the Kaluga road, abandoning Moscow? and so on. People accustomed to think in that way forget, or do not know, the inevitable conditions which always limit the activities of any commander in chief. The activity of a commander in chief does not all resemble the activity we imagine to ourselves when we sit at case in our studies examining some campaign on the map, with a certain number of troops on this and that side in a certain known locality, and begin our plans from some given moment. A commander in chief is never dealing with the beginning of any event - the position from which we always contemplate it. The commander in chief is always in the midst of a series of shifting events and so he never can at any moment consider the whole import of an event that is occurring. Moment by moment the event is imperceptibly shaping itself, and at every moment of this continuous, uninterrupted shaping of events the commander in chief is in the midst of a most complex play of intrigues, worries, contingencies, authorities, projects, counsels, threats, and deceptions and is continually obliged to reply to innumerable questions addressed to him, which constantly conflict with one another.
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Book 13, Chapter II: The natural momentum of the opposing armies
The famous flank movement merely consisted in this: after the advance of the French had ceased, the Russian army, which had been continually retreating straight back from the invaders, deviated from that direct course and, not finding itself pursued, was naturally drawn toward the district where supplies were abundant. If instead of imagining to ourselves commanders of genius leading the Russian army, we picture that army without any leaders, it could not have done anything but make a return movement toward Moscow, describing an arc in the direction where most provisions were to be found and where the country was richest.
Kutuzov's merit lay, not in any strategic maneuver of genius, as it is called, but in the fact that he alone understood the significance of what had happened. He alone then understood the meaning of the French army's inactivity, he alone continued to assert that the battle of Borodino had been a victory, he alone - who as commander in chief might have been expected to be eager to attack - employed his whole strength to restrain the Russian army from useless engagements. The beast wounded at Borodino was lying where the fleeing hunter had left him but whether he was still alive, whether he was strong and merely lying low, the hunter did not know. Suddenly the beast was heard to moan. The moan of that wounded beast (the French army) which betrayed its calamitous condition was the sending of Lauriston to Kutuzov's camp with overtures for peace.
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A change in the dynamics of the war
But [Kutuzov] continued to exert all his powers to restrain his troops from attacking. During the month that the French troops were pillaging in Moscow and the Russian troops were quietly encamped at Tarutino, a change had taken place in the relative strength of the two armies- both in spirit and in number- as a result of which the superiority had passed to the Russian side.
Though the condition and numbers of the French army were unknown to the Russians, as soon as that change occurred the need of attacking at once showed itself by countless signs . . . the desire for revenge that lay in the heart of every Russian as long as the French were in Moscow, and (above all) a dim consciousness in every soldier's mind that the relative strength of the armies had changed and that the advantage was now on our side. There was a substantial change in the relative strength, and an advance had become inevitable. And at once, as a clock begins to strike and chime as soon as the minute hand has completed a full circle, this change was shown by an increased activity, whirring, and chiming in the higher spheres.
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